The cardiac market has been a very lucrative part of the healthcare system, partly because of growing demand, partly because of new innovation, and partly because the system has overpriced the services. To what extent are their plans predicated on continued high prices?

This just threw the healthcare industry for a loop. The state and local health departments had to regroup.

The underlying health care costs are not going to go down. They will continue to grow annually in the 8%-to-10% range for as far as we can see. Managed care is over.

any other healthcare providers or other entities.

Great physicians and nurses, skilled, caring and unparalleled in their training, intervened in my life and probably saved it. I was lucky but other Americans are not. It is time to speak again and stand again for the ideal that in the richest nation ever on this planet, it is wrong for 41 million Americans, most of them in working families, to worry at night and wake up in the morning without the basic protection of health insurance.

Fixing our healthcare system as a whole is our primary challenge, and to make it happen you need to get engaged – to pound the pavement, get your hands dirty, endure real sacrifice, take on antiquated thinking and help lead the public debate.